Does defiance work? How defying “naming and shaming” shapes foreign public opinion

When “naming and shaming” fails, it is often because target states respond with defiance rather than compliance. Yet existing research remains limited in two respects: it offers few clear predictions about how foreign publics respond to such defiance, and it pays relatively limited attention to a central purpose of transnational advocacy—empowering aggrieved local actors. This study addresses both gaps by examining how international norm compliance constituencies respond after target states reject external criticism of their human rights records. Drawing on survey experiments on American public responses to defiance by Japan and China, we show that the effects of defiance are relational. Defiance increased support for Japan, a U.S. ally but did not increase support for China, a U.S. rival. At the same time, defiance also weakened U.S. public support for local rights claimants in the human rights controversies under investigation. This pattern matters because continued foreign pressure is often treated as essential to successful norm enforcement but is rarely examined after the target state openly pushes back. The findings suggest that defiance can weaken the transnational pressure on which local claimants often depend, even when it fails to improve perceptions of the target state itself. The study therefore highlights how defiance reshapes foreign public opinion in relational ways that can blunt continued compliance pressure and undermine support for local rights claimants.
© The Author(s) 2026.